China Proposes To Drop Presidential Term Limits

Beijing (February 25, 2018): China’s Communist Party (CCP) has proposed amending the country’s constitution to allow President Xi Jinping to serve a third term in office.

The state-run news agency said the Party will remove the provision that the President and Vice President “shall serve no more than two consecutive terms” from the constitution of the People’s Republic of China.The proposed amendment will have to be ratified by China’s rubber-stamp parliament — the National People’s Congress (NPC) — in March.

When it goes into effect, Xi will be free to serve indefinitely as China’s head of state, the strongest indication yet he is intending to maintain power at the top beyond the two 5-year terms served by his predecessors for the past 20 years.Plans to change the country’s constitution for the first time since 2004 were announced in December, with most analysts predicting the Party would seek to modify the country’s top legal document to create a National Supervision Commission (NSC), a country-wide anti-corruption task force with sweeping new powers.